


License to Love

by mozbee



Category: Good Omens (TV), Good Omens - Neil Gaiman & Terry Pratchett
Genre: Alternate Universe - Human, Emotional Baggage, First Kiss, Fluff and Humor, Getting Together, Happy Ending, M/M, POV Aziraphale (Good Omens), Romance, Self-Esteem Issues, if there isn't already a james bond film with this title, there should be
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2020-12-29
Updated: 2021-01-04
Packaged: 2021-03-11 03:21:27
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 11,226
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/28398375
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mozbee/pseuds/mozbee
Summary: Aziraphale works for the Driver and Vehicle Licensing Agency, and he is bored. Bored of work, bored of home, and bored of being bored. He's getting older, he's getting lonelier, and he's realizing he has nothing to look back on in life that truly excites him. Then he meets Anthony J. Crowley, a disgraced photojournalist whose biggest crime is his bleeding heart.Also the three stop signs he ran during his driving test. That was illegal.Crowley fails the test. But then he turns up at Aziraphale's favourite diner. And then his favourite bar, and from there it seems to be inevitable.Alternatively titled 'How Aziraphale Got His Groove Back'.
Relationships: Aziraphale/Crowley (Good Omens)
Comments: 26
Kudos: 52





	1. Like a Schooner in a Hurricane

**Author's Note:**

> I hope to Frances McDormand I've tagged everything that should be. This is just a feel-good story about tapping the well of self-worth and realizing it's never too late to make a change. It's more optimistic than I am.

“Mr. Crowley?” Aziraphale calls into the packed waiting room. A lanky being stands from the crowd and approaches. “Ah, wonderful. If I could just get you to sign—” he passes his clipboard over and motions to the blank line. Anthony J. Crowley signs with a flourish and Aziraphale takes the clipboard back. “Wonderful. I think we’re ready to begin—”

“Hey, how come he gets served first?” a belligerent man asks from the crowd. “I got here before him.”

Aziraphale casts an apologetic look at Mr. Crowley and turns to the other man. “Pass me your service slip,” he asks without asking. “Ah yes, you see—” he holds the man’s paper up, tapping the number in bold. “You’re number 32. He’s 30. We count up from zero, and thirty comes before thirty-two. Do you see how that works?”

He turns and leads the way from the suffocating waiting room, pausing outside for Mr. Crowley to catch up.

“I understand you’ve been abroad,” he says, patting his pockets for his extra pens. “Just need a renewal, eh? Which is yours?” he adds, gesturing to the parking lot before them.

“Just here.” They stop in front of a glossy black Bentley and Aziraphale’s jaw drops.

“You’re putting me on,” he accuses Mr. Crowley, who just grins and dangles a key from one finger. Aziraphale’s heart skips a beat and he quickly looks down at his clipboard. “Well. That’s, I mean, what a lovely— er, let’s get on with the safety check.” He tamps down his enthusiasm to a professional degree and motions to the car. “If you don’t mind, start her up and we’ll check the lights.”

He is unaccountably pleased with the sheen of the taillights and signals winking at him from under gleaming black covers, and he hums with excitement as he checks off the boxes and comes around to the passenger door. He reaches into his pocket and pries open the door with his fingers in his handkerchief, and with bated breath he slides in and shuts the door.

“Oh,” he sighs unintentionally when he sees the interior, untouched by time and age, the dash gleaming at him like it had just rolled off the factory line. “She’s lovely,” he tells Crowley, who is watching him from behind his dark glasses. “How long have you had her?”

“Fifteen years,” Crowley says, and he sounds proud, pleased as punch to be the owner of such a well-maintained vehicle. “Bought her off a neighbour who’d had her since she was built.”

“1926?”

Crowley beams. “Spot on.”

“Well, you’ve taken impeccable care of her,” Aziraphale says. “I do so hate to see classics like this updated to reflect the modern times, you know, with the mp3 players—” he stops, flushing slightly. “Right. Let’s get on with it.” He slips his glasses on and glances to his right. “Seatbelt.”

Crowley snaps his buckle in place and Aziraphale does the same.

“I imagine as this is just a brushing up, it will go quite smoothly,” Aziraphale says in the silence. “So. Straight out, then turn right.”

\---

Aziraphale’s initial assessment of this licensing test being a breeze proves to be horribly inaccurate.

“Stop signs are meant for ¬ _stopping_ , Mr. Crowley!” Aziraphale manages, and the Bentley screeches to an abrupt, jarring stop. His heart pounds as he draws a shaky line through the 1 on his paper. “I can’t imagine wherever you’d gone would have stop signs meaning ‘proceed at will.’”

“Ah,” Mr. Crowley says, with an utterly insincere sheepish chuckle. “Mistook it, I’m afraid.”

“For a green light?” Aziraphale demands, and shakes his head. “Never mind. Left down Wiltshire, and we’ll practice,” he shudders, “parallel parking.”

\---

They roar to a stop in the parking lot, tires well over the painted yellow lines, and Mr. Crowley turns to Aziraphale with a grin. “So. How’d I do?”

Aziraphale swallows through a dry mouth. “You failed. Horribly. Here you go,” and he tears off the top copy of his paper and hands it to Mr. Crowley. He may go vomit once he’s inside, he’s not sure yet. He takes hold of the door handle.

“Can I schedule my next one?” Mr. Crowley asks.

“If you care to go inside you can do so with Tracy at the desk,” Aziraphale says, and he gets out. Mr. Crowley follows.

“I’d like to make sure I have you again,” he tells Aziraphale, and those words coming from those lips set a fire burning in Aziraphale’s gut. “To show off my improvement,” Mr. Crowley adds.

“Well,” Aziraphale nods, then nods again, still trying to come to terms with the roiling nausea in his gut, “I test every day except Wednesday.”

“Then I’ll see you any day except Wednesday,” Mr. Crowley grins.

“Right,” Aziraphale nods, and Christ he must look like his head’s on a spring by now, and he strides back into the DVLA, to push past the everlasting crowd for the relative sanctuary of his cramped office, really nothing more than a sealed cubicle. He drops in his ergonomic chair, the clipboard clattering to the desk.

He bites back a groan at the irritating patterned knock on his door. It swings open, nearly colliding with the front of his desk and Gabriel steps in, worryingly bearing a thick binder. Aziraphale hates binders from Gabriel.

“Aziraphale!” Gabriel looms over him, smiling widely. “Glad I caught you. I have our new training and orientation procedures.” He thumps the binder on the desk. “And—” he snaps his fingers until Aziraphale looks up—“think any more about my offer?”

Funny thing about Gabriel is when he makes you an “offer,” because he actually casually demands something, but you pretend like it’s a request. It’s not very funny, or at all, actually, but for Gabriel, it’s downright hilarious.

“Oh, the seminars,” Aziraphale says, fiddling with the edge of his desk, the cheap particle board flaking away in vaster quantities every day. “Yes, and I had thought that I—”

“Cuz we’re all about the Team Effort here, right? This office needs all of its parts to function as a whole.”

“And you need me to lead traffic safety seminars to help fill that whole,” Aziraphale manages with a straight face. Gabriel beams.

“Exactly! Now I know you’ve said in the past you’re not one for public speaking, but it’s important to overcome obstacles in life, isn’t it? Maybe help you gain some perspective on what really matters.”

“Yes, and that would be—”

“Work!” Gabriel booms. “Not flights of fancy. Gotta come down from the clouds sometime, eh?” He reaches and gives Aziraphale a hearty slap on the shoulder. “I want an outline of your first seminar ready for next Wednesday, ca-pisces?”

Aziraphale winces. _Ca-pisces_? “Yes, of course.” Dismayed, he realizes he just allowed himself to be pushed into the whole fiasco. “Er, I mean, I don’t actually know if I can—”

“Employee of the month being decided this week,” Gabriel says casually, as if the thought of an unflattering 8x11 hung up on the wall behind the reception desk should send Aziraphale’s heart fluttering. “Comes with a tidy little bonus, and all you have to do is give a crap!”

He taps the binder he’s dropped on the desk with one finger. “Get these read by next week too. We have new hires at the end of the month.”

“Wonderful,” Aziraphale lies through gritted teeth. Time was he’d had the patience for the rigamarole of training new employees, but over the last year he’s become Disillusioned and rather resentful of his career and overall life choices. Anathema had dismissed it as a midlife crisis, which had made Aziraphale hopeful that he would suddenly buy a motorbike or take to wearing leather, but so far as he can tell, he’s just become dumpier and fussier.

“Oh,” a thought occurs to him, “the seminars won’t be on Fridays, will they? I have a standing engagement every Friday that I cannot miss.”

“Saturdays in September. I assumed you of all people would have Saturdays free.” Gabriel gives a bright grin as though he’s just paid Aziraphale a compliment.

Aziraphale has just restrained the urge to roll his eyes when an oily voice says, “Saturdays in September. Sounds like a poem.”

“Hey!” Gabriel grins at Sandalphon’s pronouncement and gestures expansively at Aziraphale. “It does, doesn’t it? You’re a poet. You should write it. Don’t forget to give me a shout out.”

How many times can one person reasonably use finger guns in one conversation? Aziraphale thinks once is more than enough. “I will certainly…” and he stops and waits for either of them to fill the silence. It doesn’t take long.

“Boss, a word? About the new, uh—” Sandalphon trails off meaningfully, and Gabriel’s eyes go wide and he nods. 

“Well, Aziraphale, you’ve probably got your hands full with the rest of the day, so we will get out of your hair.” Gabriel winks and backs out, teeth glinting under the fluorescent lighting. He leaves the door open, and the crowd in the building swarms into Aziraphale’s small office, in ringing telephones and loud voices, squeaky shoes on linoleum, and every single person walking past his office slowing to look in, curious or annoyed, and Aziraphale flips every single one of them off under his desk.

 _You’re a poet_. Gabriel manages to make it sound like an insult, a failing. It’s not like it’s something Aziraphale goes around _telling_ people; Anathema had convinced him to enter a piece in a contest, then he won, then it was published and someone in the office read about it in the paper and asked him loudly about it in the break room. The way some of them looked at him, like he was standing there bragging instead of wishing fervently for them all to move on.

His name card had been switched to a handwritten ‘Tennison’ and he’d sighed a silent apology to Lord Alfred and switched the cards back out.

He gets up and shuts the door, easy to do when all he has to do is stand and lean forward a few inches to catch the edge of the door and swing it shut. He sits back in his chair ad swivels away from the door. The window behind him has the blinds drawn and twisted shut as always. Even if he were to open them, it wouldn’t be a dreary parking lot for him to look out on, but the corridor behind him, that housed other tiny offices and a cramped washroom.

He shuts his eyes, closed in in this glass box that smells like paper and ink, stifling him nine hours a day, five days a week. He leaves work every day feeling like a bird freed from a cage, finally able to stretch his wings and do more than pace. And then he goes home, and that cage reforms around him, a little bigger, a little more lonely for it.

_I feel freest when…_

Anathema hadn’t needed to think about it.

“When I’m outside, laying on the grass or dirt—”

“Passed out,” Aziraphale says from behind his wine. Anathema swats at him.

“— _with my friends_ , and I can feel how big the earth is, and all the lives on it, and everyone whose lived already, over thousands of years, and the trees, Aziraphale, the _trees_ that are hundreds of years old!” She’d gotten quite teary proclaiming her love for all things on earth, and even though she was nearly incoherent by the end, Aziraphale still understood when she turned the question on him.

He still hasn’t answered the question, not for her, nor really himself. He’s never much thought like that before, being free. When he left his family home, it hadn’t felt like freedom. It had been new, and scary for its newness, and it was the first time he’d truly had to soldier on no matter how hard it was. He hadn’t felt free, he’d felt lost.

And he’d stepped right into this job, handed his shackles from one grip to another, and milled about trying to make others happy, and it’s only now that he’s frighteningly close to fifty he realizes he should have worked on making himself happy first.

Aziraphale snaps back to reality with the sharp knock on his door. He opens his eyes and turns the chair.

“Yes?”

\---

Anathema grins at Aziraphale over her beer. “I’m a standing engagement?”

“Well, you are,” Aziraphale shrugs. “We’ve met here nearly every Friday the past year, not to mention how you’ve insinuated yourself into other aspects of my life.” He imagines he sounds quite prim and proper, until Anathema cackles at him.

“You are _hammered_ ,” she says delightedly. “I did not understand anything after the first sentence.” She doesn’t startle at the sudden hand on her shoulder, instead reaching to squeeze it, and Newt sits down next to her, cheeks flushed from pushing through the crowd around the bar to get to them.

“Alright?” he asks them, and kisses Anathema’s cheek.

“Evening, Newt,” Aziraphale says, raising his glass. He passes what he supposes is a pleasant evening with the two of them, as they usually are when spent together, and when he wakes up Saturday morning he has a bugger of a headache and he’s asleep on the rug in front of his couch. He also doesn’t remember much past ‘evening Newt’ but again, his time spent with the two of them is usually pleasant so he considers the evening a success.

He’s decidedly miserable with nausea and spends the morning alternating between the couch and toilet, and by noon he’s got nothing left but dry heaves and he calls Anathema up.

“Piper’s?” he asks.

Anathema groans loudly and gurgles at the end which he knows to take as an affirmative.

Twenty minutes later he’s sat in a corner booth of their usual haunt, the smell of greasy diner food bringing a great comfort to his soul and roiling gut. His tea sits next to a cup of coffee that is the perfect temperature for drinking when Anathema drops across from him.

Aziraphale takes one look at the circles under her eyes, her pale complexion, and when Adam strides up for their order he says, “the usual for me, and pancakes with unholy amounts of syrup for her, if you please, Adam.”

Adam grins. “Rough night, Ana? Out drinking with the wicked again?”

Anathema grunts around her coffee while Aziraphale raises a brow. “She was with _me,_ I’ll have you know.”

“I figured,” Adam says, and he’s gone before Aziraphale clues in.

“Incorrigible,” Aziraphale mutters fondly. He eyes Anathema across the table. “Well. You’re beginning to resemble something human-shaped, at least.”

“How are you so damn chipper?” she grumbles at him. “I left you whistling Beethoven on your couch.”

“I paid for it this morning,” he promises her. He sips his tea, relieved when it makes contact without leaving him rushing to vomit.

“What are you doing tonight?” Anathema asks as their food is set in front of them. She smacks Adam’s arm as he waves a bottle of syrup over and around her plate before finally allowing her to snatch it from him.

Aziraphale concentrates on slicing his crepe as he tries to think of something other than the truth. “I’m going to a poetry reading,” and he curses himself as he bites into a heavenly sweet crepe fragment dripping with butter and heavy with bananas and hazelnut spread. It’s an awful habit of his, telling the truth.

Anathema lights up. “Are you going to be reading?”

“No,” he says firmly, and leans back as Adam materializes to refill their drinks. “You know I don’t do that.”

Anathema rolls her eyes, sticking her tongue out at Adam as he departs. “Yeah yeah, I know you _don’t_ but I don’t know _why_ you don’t.” She eyes him critically over her forkful of pancake. “You write good stuff.”

“Thank you but don’t.” He glances up when a loud laugh draws his gaze, and his breath catches in his throat.

There, perched on one of a half dozen stools in front of the counter, is Mr. Crowley, draped in the same sleek black as last week, chatting animatedly with Adam. He must have been staring because Anathema is waving her hand in front of his face.

“What are you—” she turns, craning her neck to see what he’s looking at, and she says brightly, “oh!” And then she raises her hand and calls, “Crowley!”

Aziraphale is hovering again between mortification and excitement. “How do you know him?” he asks desperately. Crowley has looked over, seen Anathema, and then he sees Aziraphale. His face lights up and he stands.

“He’s my neighbour,” Anathema says, turned back in her seat, stabbing at soggy chunks of pancake. “Just moved in. Crowley,” she adds around a mouthful.

Crowley comes up, Adam in tow, and nods at Anathema. “Book girl,” and then he turns a grin on Aziraphale. “I wasn’t expecting to see you again til next Tuesday at ten.”

“Next Tuesday?” Aziraphale repeats.

Crowley bobs his head. “My next test.”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, and he fears he isn’t quick enough to keep the grimace from his face. Crowley laughs.

“I think you’ll find I’m much improved.”

“What test?” Anathema asks, and abruptly reaches and tugs Crowley down to the empty seat beside her. “Stop hovering.”

“Have to beg for my license back,” Crowley tells her, and he’s still grinning at Aziraphale.

“Well, I won’t make you beg,” Aziraphale says, then flushes under the slow stretch of Crowley’s smile.

Anathema scoffs. “Good luck,” she tells Crowley, nodding at Aziraphale. “He even failed _me_ , his oldest friend.”

“You failed you,” Aziraphale tells her, and forces himself to stop staring at Crowley’s easy grin. Even across the table from each other, he feels pinned by the weight of the gaze, the shape of the man, seeming to take up more than his share of space, and for a moment he wishes they were back in the Bentley. He catches a faint waft of cologne when Crowley leans to accept a coffee cup from Adam.

“So you’re all mates, then,” Adam says to the three of them, and it doesn’t sound like a question.

“Er—” Aziraphale glances across the table but Crowley doesn’t hesitate.

“Yeah, what do you sound surprised for, that’s me, innit, making new friends wherever I go. I’m a real social butterfly.”

Adam snorts. “Until last year your only friends were me and _my_ friends.”

Crowley looks to Aziraphale, grinning behind his cup. “I was doing some community service, you understand, and they paired me off with the most hapless gaggle of brats they had, all of them one step away from a life of depravity and crime—” He dodges a hand that’s reached out to rough up his hair.

“And then you shoved us that last step,” Adam says, and they both laugh. “I’m glad you’re back,” he tells Crowley. “I gotta get back but you have to come over soon.”

Crowley waves him off and sips his coffee, completely at ease. “So how d’you know Adam, then?”

“Just from here. He’s always waited on us.”

A phone rang, and Crowley dug into his pocket and made a face. “Sorry, I have to take this, but,” he looks back up, “I’ll see you Tuesday.” At Aziraphale’s nod he stands, carrying his mug over to the counter, and swings out the door.

“Wow,” Anathema says, and Aziraphale snaps back from where he was most definitely not trying to watch Crowley disappear down the sidewalk.

“What?”

She considers him for a moment, tapping her fork against her plate, then shrugs. “Just remember to use a condom.”

Aziraphale flushes and glares her down, but she meets his burning gaze with a serene smile.

“There’s no need to be vulgar,” he finally mutters, fussing with his napkin.

“What? It’s not like I was telling you to ride him raw—” the rest of her words are muffled behind the piece of pancake he’s just shoved in her mouth. She snatches the fork from him and grins, eyes bright as she chews.

“That’s not a no, though,” Anathema says once she’s swallowed. “You should ask him out.”

Aziraphale scoffs and turns his tea around on its saucer. “I think not.”

“Why not? He likes you.”

“He seems the type to like everyone,” Aziraphale says. He refuses to think more on it. That way lies only disappointment.

Anathema shrugs again. “I’m just saying, he barely said two words to me while he sat here.”

“That’s because you’re uncouth,” Aziraphale replies, then a thought occurs to him. “Book girl?”

She rolls her eyes. “I tripped over his boxes while he was moving in. I was reading,” she says, with a slightly sheepish grin.

“That does seem to be your most usual method of meeting someone, tripping headlong into their life.” He smiles at her look. “Lucky for me you’re so clumsy.”

She grins and raises her cup and they toast.

“So,” she says, “this poetry reading. Is it at The Blind Owl?”

“Yes, and no it’s not open mic, and no, even when they have that I will not be reading.” He folds his napkin and tucks it under his plate. “Now, if you’re quite finished, I’d like to leave.”

She follows him to the counter, where he pays and she leaves Adam a tip, and they wander out the front door, blinking on the sun-warmed sidewalk.

“What are your plans the rest of the day?” Aziraphale asks as they start down the street, sidestepping a group of gathered children.

Anathema bares her teeth. “Meeting Newt’s mother tonight.”

“Oh, I forgot that was tonight.” He glances at her. “Nervous?”

“Pfft,” she scoffs. “About meeting someone’s mother? No, why would I be?”

“Of course, there’s no reason to be,” he agrees. “If she’s anything like her son, she’ll be perfectly lovely.”

Anathema sighs. “He _is_ lovely.”

They part at the intersection, Aziraphale turning towards home, taking a deep breath of the warm summer air. He feels markedly improved since waking up this morning, and the thought of a nap before the poetry reading is a most pleasant one, so when he gets home ten minutes later he goes right to his bed and drops off to the memory of a slow smile across from him.

\- - -

Aziraphale has just ordered his second mulled wine when he happens to glance to his left and directly into the grinning face of one Mr. Anthony J. Crowley.

He actually gasps out loud like some starstruck homebody, and Crowley’s grin gets impossibly wider.

“It’s amazing how many places you can find by walking everywhere,” Crowley says. “All kinds of interesting places and people I’ve been missing,” he muses.

“Oh? Never been here, then?” His throat is impossible dry, and his tongue feels thick in his mouth. His palms sweat where they rest against each other in his lap. Crowley’s looking around the bar.

“Heard it was the place to be on a Saturday night.”

“They’ve got live poetry readings on tonight,” Aziraphale says. “Are you a fan?”

“Of poetry? Me? Yeah. Love it, love a good… verse.”

“Here you are, Az,” the bartender, Olivia, passes him his wine. She looks to Crowley. “Never seen you here on a Saturday, Crowley. Thought you hated poetry.”

“Must be thinking of the wrong Crowley,” he snaps back, and jerks his head. Olivia rolls her eyes but drops a fresh pint in front of him before tending to the other end of the bar. He meets Aziraphale’s gaze in fits and starts, then blows on the foam at the top of his glass and mutters something unintelligible. The tips of his ears are red.

Aziraphale smiles to himself and has a long drink of his wine. He considers Crowley, whose gone from suave to flustered in seconds, and it’s utterly endearing. “Did Anathema tell you I was going to be here tonight?”

Crowley chokes, slamming his beer on the bar as he coughs, and Aziraphale passes him a handful of napkins.

“Are you all right?”

“Yeah, brilliant,” Crowley wheezes, and he wipes his mouth and chin, then focuses on the few drops on the bar top.

“I don’t know if it’s safe to repeat myself.”

Crowley clears his throat. “Yeah, she did tell me. Only ‘cuz I asked if she knew what you were doing tonight.” He glances sidelong at Aziraphale, who is sitting quietly and watching him with a smile.

For himself, Aziraphale struggles to speak up, to be clear, or forceful. On the behalf of someone else, the barriers are few and far between.

And so he asks, “why did you want to know what I was doing tonight?”

There’s a warm hint in his voice, and Crowley picks up on it, and he leans against the bar to face Aziraphale fully, and gives him a pointed onceover. “Well, I had to make sure you were doing it alone. It won’t do for you to be out with anyone but me on a Saturday night.”

He takes a step closer, fingers brushing Aziraphale’s own splayed out on the bar top.

“I suppose not,” Aziraphale agrees, a touch breathless. Crowley presses closer and he’s hit with that same delicious smell from the close confines of the Bentley, and he savours it with a subtle, deep inhale.

“There are tables out on the patio, you can still see the poetry from out there,” Crowley says it like he’s asking but he’s already picked up Aziraphale’s wine and is sliding to his feet, looking at Aziraphale hopefully.

He has no reason to refuse, and he follows Crowley through the open side doors to the patio, and sits at a table near the low rock wall that separates the bar from the park behind it. Crowley sets their drinks down and waits for Aziraphale to sit, pushing his chair in under him before taking his own seat.

“I’ve just realized something,” Crowley tells him. He’s pulled his chair to directly beside Aziraphale instead of across from him, and his breath is warm, smelling faintly of beer. He takes his sunglasses off, and that enticing mismatched gaze meets Aziraphale’s. “I don’t actually know your name yet.”

This startles a laugh out of Aziraphale. “Before I tell you, I’ll warn you my parents were devout to an extreme, and also ‘eccentric’. If they weren’t well-off, you’d call them batshit insane.” Crowley nods seriously but his lips are quirked at the corners. “It’s Aziraphale.”

“Aziraphale,” Crowley repeats. “I’ve never heard a name like that before. Course,” he says over Aziraphale’s sigh, “I’ve never met a man like you before, so. Goes hand in hand, don’t they?”

“You…” Aziraphale is starting to loathe this dithering about between mortification and excitement. He’s starting to think there’s a name for this state of purgatory he’s stuck in, but he doesn’t want to think on it too closely.

Crowley takes his hand and presses a kiss to the back of it. He nods at the small stage. “Looks like the poetry is about to start, Aziraphale.”

Aziraphale nods along to whatever Crowley has said, mind firmly stuck on the moment warm lips had touched his hand. He turns to face the stage, but all of his senses are focused on the hand holding his, the slim fingers wrapped around his, and he feels he is about to burst out of his skin.

He sees the promise of freedom, suddenly shining in front of him, more alluring than ever. The bars of his cage tremble.

He makes a promise to himself, there on a warm patio on some nondescript August evening, while holding Crowley’s hand as if it’s the most natural thing in the world. He swears it with his eyes closed, and when he opens them again Crowley is still watching the performance, but he’s running a thumb over Aziraphale’s knuckles, and he looks perfectly content.

Aziraphale has been to a fair number of the readings at The Blind Owl, has sat through great and terrible talent, has even gotten chummy with some of the poets, but it’s tonight that will ring through his memories of the bar, forever tainting them. When the last poet has finished, and the crowd is milling about back inside to refill their drinks, and Aziraphale and Crowley are alone on the patio, one of them leans in, and is met by the other.

It doesn’t matter who started it. By unspoken agreement, they finish it together at Crowley’s flat, finally coming apart after hours of being pressed together.

Aziraphale looks at Crowley beside him on the bed, hair damp with sweat, a dazed smile on his face, and says the first coherent thing he’s managed in an hour.

“I don’t think I heard a single poem tonight.”

Crowley laughs, and then again, and he pulls Aziraphale close, kisses his cheek, his jaw, his neck. “Then I’ll write sonnets on your skin with my tongue and make it up to you,” he says, voice low with promise, and he traces his way over collarbones and shoulders, then settles his head on Aziraphale’s chest, one hand wandering down between them.

“Hmm,” he says, and lifts his head, considers Aziraphale, the innocent expression on his face at odds with the sinful things the fingers of his left hand are doing due south. “I can only come up with nine.”

“N-nine what?” Aziraphale manages, coherency out the window and halfway down the block on the number five bus.

“Nine words that rhyme with cock,” Crowley says, like it’s obvious, then he slithers down. “There must be loads more,” he sighs, and then that’s the last thing he says for awhile.

\- - -

Aziraphale wakes up in the middle of the night, which is only about an hour after he’d fallen asleep. The bedroom is cast in silvery light from the moon, and he looks to his left, to Crowley pressed against him, and he shuts his eyes, and wants what he already has, so badly he nearly shakes with it. Aziraphale rolls over, gets an inch closer, and drapes an arm across Crowley’s naked waist, and goes back to sleep.

The next time he wakes up he’s alone, his clothes folded neatly at the foot of the bed. He decides to see it for the thoughtful gesture it is and not the hint that he fears. He dresses and finds the washroom, then makes his way downstairs.

He follows the sound of cookery to the kitchen, a modern affair with brushed steel everywhere. Crowley stands in front of the stove, whacking at something in a pan with a spatula.

“Just because you never lived doesn’t mean I can’t kill you,” Crowley hisses at it, then switches the burner off.

“I’m terrified to know what you’re talking to.”

Crowley jumps and spins. His face falls when he sees Aziraphale. “Oh, shit,” he sighs. “You weren’t supposed to come down.”

“Was I expected to jump out the bathroom window to leave?”

Crowley glares, turning back and lifting the pan from the stove like a threat. “No, you were meant to stay in bed and I was going to bring this up.” He shrugs and scoops scrambled eggs onto two plates on the island. “Next time, I suppose. Tea? Or coffee?” He steps around Aziraphale to set the plates on the kitchen table next to a stack of toast.

“Um,” Aziraphale falters, and Crowley turns back.

“Oh!” he says this as if something has just occurred to him. He steps in front of Aziraphale and smiles, leaning down to kiss him. “Morning,” he says when he’s pulled away. “Sit?” He leads Aziraphale to the table and sits next to him.

“This is very nice,” Aziraphale blurts after he’s been passed tea and a piece of buttered toast. The scrambled eggs are wonderfully fluffy, and Crowley has not stopped looking at him with open adoration since he sat down. Aziraphale can’t think of the last time someone has made him a meal, and he knows no one has ever looked at him in such a heated way before. It’s all making his chest feel tight, and he’s still hung up on that bloody precipice between mortification and excitement, and he can sense something else, something he wants to call fear, or perhaps elation. Always one end of the spectrum to the other, just to keep things confusing, he thinks.

“You should see what I’ll make you after our first date,” Crowley says, shaking ketchup over his eggs.

“First date?”

Crowley turns big eyes on him. “Well, last night didn’t count as a _date_ , did it? Neither of us asked the other, I just sort of lowkey stalked you and it happened to work out in my favour.”

“Both our favours,” Aziraphale says, and Crowley grins and nods.

“How about dinner?”

“Yes,” Aziraphale says, “but.”

“But what?”

Aziraphale sighs. He’d rather not say, but he made a promise to himself last night and he means to uphold it, for both their sakes. “It’s embarrassing,” he warns, “but I haven’t dated anyone in a long time, and I— well, last night, I’ve never done something like that before.”

Crowley looks wary. “Did I push you?” he asks.

“No,” Aziraphale is quick to reassure him, “no, oh, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean for you to think that, I wanted— everything, very much. I enjoyed all of it,” and he flushes at the sudden memory of a searing hot mouth against his own, fingertips exploring every inch of him, a hitched voice gasping brokenly in his ear.

“I just mean,” he says once he’s got himself back in hand, “it surprised me, that I would do that, and how much I enjoyed it, and it’s just made me nervous, or overthink, I suppose. I wasn’t sure if this was a one-off or not.”

“I would like it to be more,” Crowley says, meeting his gaze evenly. He reaches out and tangles their fingers together. “I want more than one night with you.” He hesitates, then adds, “I’m nervous too.”

“Well,” Aziraphale says, suspended between black and white, the scales threatening to tip him either way, “I guess we can muddle through together.”

“Always been good at muddling, that’s me, top muddler,” Crowley nods.

Breakfast sits quite forgotten between them.

“So,” Aziraphale says, “where do we go from here?”

Crowley ponders this for a half second. “Back to bed?”

It’s true that Aziraphale has not had sex in more than twelve years, and it’s also true that he hasn’t dated anyone for that long, but falling into bed with Crowley raises no complications, no hesitations. It doesn’t matter if he fumbles or they knock teeth and bump heads. Crowley is warm and happy, taking such obvious joy in the pleasures of the flesh, and he’s _fun_ , Aziraphale realizes with a shiver.

Aziraphale falters only once, when he’s pushed onto his back and Crowley hovers over him in the full light of day, and he’s suddenly hyper aware of how he must look, and Crowley is just staring.

“What’s the matter?” Crowley asks, tracing a finger over the unhappy turn of Aziraphale’s mouth.

Aziraphale shakes his head, but again, he _promised_ himself, and he owes himself. “It was easier in the dark,” he says, and motions down at himself when Crowley looks confused. His expression softens when he clues in, and he lays down next to Aziraphale, kissing him deeply.

“I love the way you look,” Crowley says softly when they break apart. “I don’t think you have anything to be self-conscious of. You’re gorgeous.”

Aziraphale closes his eyes against the pronouncement, and a warm kiss is pressed to each eyelid. He’s immeasurably grateful Crowley has tugged the sheet over them as he says, “I just didn’t want you to laugh at me.”

Crowley’s arms tighten around him. “Oh, angel,” he sighs, and buries his face in his hair. “Never.”

“I mean,” he goes on, after they’ve pulled apart and Aziraphale can do a much better job at pretending he hadn’t been embarrassingly close to tears, “ _with_ you, yeah. I nearly lost it the day I met you.” He imitates Aziraphale horribly. “ _30 comes before 32, do you see how that works?_ ”

“Oh,” Aziraphale sighs, “I really hate customer service.”

Crowley chuckles.

“I don’t think I know what you do,” Aziraphale realizes, and it’s a little startling, that he’s known Crowley intimately, but doesn’t know how he makes a living. It’s such a reverse from what he’s always thought relationships should be, out of the natural order of things, though to be fair, he’s always played it safe in his little corner of existence.

Maybe this is just something people do. Maybe he can be one of the people that just does it.

“Oh, photojournalist, freelance, maybe retired,” Crowley says. “That’s where I was, these last few years. Travelling for work, let my license lapse. Not like anyone was concerned with it where I was. Mostly rode scooters to get around. Thailand,” he says to Aziraphale’s unasked question. “Since February. Before that, South Korea, India, and way too long in Africa.”

“That sounds like an incredible job,” Aziraphale says. He’s never been outside of the United Kingdom.

“It’s…” Crowley waggles a hand side-to-side in front of them. “Well. There’s good and bad to it, like every job.”

They settle against each other. Aziraphale’s eyes droop at the fingers running along his back, circling his shoulders and rubbing the nape of his neck. He leans closer and peppers Crowley’s neck with soft kisses, and the other man swallows hard, fingers pressing in harder.

“Angel?” Aziraphale asks suddenly. Crowley coughs.

“It’s what I call all the pretty girls,” he mutters, then yelps when sharp fingers dig into his ribs. “All right,” he laughs, and pulls Aziraphale up for a kiss. “You’ve got this ridiculously soft cloud of curls that just go with your blessed name. And it just—” he shrugs, runs a finger down Aziraphale’s face, temple to jaw. “It sort of just slipped out, really.”

“It’s very sweet,” Aziraphale tells him.

“Not sweet. Sexy. Seductive,” Crowley insists. Aziraphale nods.

“Of course, that’s what I meant.” He slips a hand under the sheet, and Crowley goes very still against him, breath hitching in anticipation. Aziraphale kisses his throat, feels his fluttering pulse.

“Let’s see how many ways you can get an angel to sin.”


	2. Like Wheat in a Field

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Crowley quirks a grin at him.
> 
> “Take a picture, angel, it’ll last longer.”
> 
> “I would very much like to,” Aziraphale smiles at him. “One of the two of us, perhaps.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This is getting sappy and I love it.

“Eyes front, no smiling.”

The words are familiar, but instead of being flatly repeated for the umpteenth time that day, they’re fondly admonishing.

“I really can’t spend all day here taking your picture, you know.” Aziraphale tries to sound stern but Crowley’s currently posing like Marilyn Monroe over a subway vent and he’s fighting a losing battle with the smile tugging at his mouth.

Crowley pouts over his shoulder at him. “I can’t think of a better way for government funds to be spent.”

“It’s only your head and maybe the top of your shoulders that fit in anyway,” Aziraphale reminds him.

“May as well be my best,” Crowley shrugs, then he stands in front of the white backdrop, shoulders square. “Any chance of having Godzilla knocking over Big Ben behind me?” he asks hopefully.

“It’s Tuesday. Tuesdays are Mothman.”

“What!” Crowley looks affronted. “That big wingy bastard? What’s he do, flap his wings and knock over your souffle?”

Aziraphale has Crowley perfectly in frame, and he zooms in, for an up-close look at the frowning mouth, smiling to himself. “Do you have any idea how destructive that would be? Have you ever made a souffle before?”

He watches him through the lens: the minute changes in expression, the pull of skin at the corner of his mouth, the quirk of a brow. He watches and remembers his own fingers and mouth on those sharp edges.

Crowley catches him looking and grins. “Take a picture, it’ll last longer.”

“I’m trying,” Aziraphale means to say it pointedly, but he’s fighting back a laugh and it comes out entirely too good-humoured.

“What’s happening, Aziraphale?”

Aziraphale swears creatively in his head, then turns to face Sandalphon. “Sorry?”

“What you doing?”

Aziraphale looks between the camera in front of him and Crowley standing silent against the backdrop. He looks at Sandalphon.

“Taking a picture for his license.” The _obviously_ is implied but left unsaid.

“What was that bit about a moth ball?”

_Not only do you eavesdrop, you do it badly_ , Aziraphale scoffs. He wonders how long Sandalphon had been hovering.

“A joke,” Aziraphale says shortly. “If that’s all?”

He turns back to Crowley, ignoring the slick presence in the doorway.

“Eyes front, no smiling. Oh, and,” Aziraphale gestures at his own face, “glasses off, please. Unless you can’t.” He doesn’t know if their constant wear is for medical reasons or simply preference.

Crowley tugs them off, and Aziraphale lines up the shot. He’s never seen Crowley’s face this bare. The difference in his eyes is startling up close, the smooth dark brown of his right at odds with the jagged red colouring the white of his left. The pupil is a black pool, never dilating or constricting.

Aziraphale snaps the picture. When he looks up, Crowley’s got his sunglasses back on.

“All set, Mr. Crowley,” he says. “You’ve got your temporary license until this one comes in the mail. About two weeks.”

Crowley nods. “Right, thanks then. I’ll see you…when I need a renewal.” He hurries out, and Sandalphon watches him go with a sneer.

“Fancy bloke, that one.”

“If by that you mean he has more than a lick of fashion sense then yes, by your standards very fancy.” Aziraphale is irritated, and feels caught out, wrong-footed. He hadn’t done anything _wrong_ , chatting with Crowley. But a few words and a greasy sneer from Sandalphon is all it takes for anxiety to pound at Aziraphale’s temple.

Aziraphale takes the memory card from the camera and goes to log it with Crowley’s successful test and renewal. Sandalphon hovers the entire time, and Aziraphale is annoyed to find himself fumbling under the stare of the other man.

“Was there something else you needed?” Aziraphale has just bitten out when Gabriel sticks his head in the room.

“Aziraphale! You’ve got time before your next client, come give me a five-minute rundown on your first seminar.”

Aziraphale looks up. “Pardon? You said we would do that on Wednesday. Tomorrow.”

“Pretty sure I said Tuesday. I like presentations on Tuesdays.”

Aziraphale is about to _politely_ refute this when Sandalphon says coyly, “or is it Mothman on Tuesdays?”

Aziraphale turns to him and Sandalphon sneers at him, and suddenly the jocular nature of Crowley’s picture seems wrong, something to be ashamed of, and Aziraphale feels a familiar twist of guilt in his gut.

“You said Wednesday,” he says to Gabriel, irritation at Sandalphon, at himself, lending a sharpness to his words.

Gabriel shrugs. “Tuesday, Wednesday, what’s the diff?”

“About twenty-four hours,” Aziraphale points out. Gabriel’s grin is frozen on his face.

“I’m sure you didn’t leave it ‘til the last minute. I’ll see you in my office.” He pulls back and Sandalphon slinks after him.

Aziraphale stands alone, replaying the last thirty seconds in his head, and thinks about what would happen if he just left. He’s always been good at avoidance, has found it to be a quite satisfactory coping mechanism for a long time, and right now it is a sweeter thought than having to face Gabriel.

He’d _said_ Wednesday, Aziraphale knew that. He may loathe his job but he’s not an absent-minded buffoon. He has a busy schedule and he’s meticulous about keeping it organized.

_No matter_ , he says to himself, and forces a deep inhale and exhale, and wipes his palms on his trousers, and goes to meet Gabriel.

\- - -

Anathema calls one hour before his lunch break.

“How about I bring you a pretzel?”

Aziraphale feels rubbed raw from his morning with Gabriel. He’s dreading these seminars more than before, and Sandalphon won’t stop smirking and looming. Something’s up, and it’s giving him a headache.

“That would be heavenly,” he tells Anathema, picking at the chipped edge of his desk a bit more. “I can meet you in an hour.’

Sixty-three minutes later Aziraphale is walking down the street to cross to the park across the road. Anathema is sitting on a bench, two enormous soft pretzels with her.

“Damn,” she says as he sits next to her. “What was it? A sixteen-year-old in a rust bucket?”

“Pardon me?”

She gestures at him with a pretzel before passing it to him. “You look like a baby’s ass.” She grins at his look. “You know, wiped.”

“Suddenly I find myself not wanting mustard for this,” Aziraphale sighs. Anathema makes a face but bites into her mustard drenched pretzel regardless.

“Gaybwiel?” she asks.

Aziraphale pointedly hands her a napkin. “Yes, to your eloquent query. He’s being especially insufferable.”

“So tell him to shove it. I know you want to,” Anathema grins. “Fuck the whole job.”

“Yes, yes, stick it to the man, and all,” Aziraphale punches the air with a chunk of pretzel and pops it in his mouth.

“I’m serious. You don’t like it, like, at all, you work with the weirdest people, and _Sandalphon_ ,” she cries. “There’s someone walking around legitimately named _Sandalphon_. Of course, he’s a government drone.”

“How is my being named Aziraphale any different?”

Anathema flaps her hand at him. “It’s different. I like you. Everyone likes you.”

“Nobody likes me,” he says, and he means it as a joke but Anathema glares at him.

“Fuck what anyone says. Everyone likes you. Even Newt, and he’s too scared to like anyone. And whoever doesn’t like you can kick rocks.” She gives him a mischievous glance around her next bite. “I know someone who likes you for sure.” She waggles her eyebrows.

Aziraphale ignores her.

She leans closer. “Someone who likes to dress in black.”

Aziraphale eats his pretzel. Anathema presses against his side.

“Someone who always wears sunglasses, and it should be douche-y but it’s kinda hot.” Anathema’s shoulder digs against his. “Someone with more angles than a protractor.”

Aziraphale thinks of Crowley’s long legs, draped in tight black jeans, and bare on black sheets, knees bent invitingly, and he feels himself flush.

“Someone who swears way too much at inanimate objects,” and that startles a laugh out of Aziraphale.

“He does,” he says, facing Anathema, forcing her to pull back. “He cussed out eggs the other morning.”

Anathema cackles, throwing her head back. “The day I met him he told a couch to fuck off.” She suddenly whips to look at him, eyebrows raised, a knowing smirk starting. “The other morning?”

The remnants of his pretzel are suddenly deserving of all of his attention, and he focuses on his lap instead of the steadily gloating look on his right.

“So, uh, did you go to the bar Saturday night?”

Aziraphale nods, because he doesn’t have it in him to ignore anyone long-term.

“And did you happen to meet anyone there?”

He nods again, because of his annoying habit of telling the truth.

“OH MY GOD did you guys boink or what?!” Anathema explodes.

“Please!” Aziraphale gasps, too mortified to glance around to see if anyone had heard her yell. “No matter your views on it, that’s a private subject.”

“Sorry,” Anathema mutters, withering under his glare. He feels guilty after a minute of her wounded air, and offers an olive branch.

“I am glad that you told him where I would be.”

She looks up and smiles at him. “Then I am, too.”

“I’m,” he stops to clear his throat, realizing he doesn’t know what he means to say, “I’m scared.”

Oh, if he’d known he’d meant to say that he would have kept his mouth shut.

Anathema looks surprised but it clears and she regards him with something kind in her eyes. “Of what?”

He laughs a bit, maybe he can play it off. “I didn’t mean it that way, I’m not scared, that would be silly.”

Anathema considers his words, then shrugs. “I don’t think it’s silly to feel some way at the start of something new. If it was a new job you probably wouldn’t think it was weird to be scared. Or nervous, or excited…” she trails off.

“It’s just,” he starts and stops, tearing fine strips in the pretzel bag, swallows hard, “I haven’t, um, exactly dated anyone, in quite some time and—” his breath leaves him in a little huff, and he fools himself it sounds like a chuckle— “I don’t want to—” he breaks off and shrugs.

“Look stupid?” Anathema offers softly.

Aziraphale jerks his head in a nod. “Or be a disappointment,” he says, and feels years-old shame swirl in his gut.

“Aziraphale,” she says, and it’s love he hears in her voice, not something so awful as pity, and he is glad for it, “you could never be a disappointment to someone who loved you. Because that’s what love is, right?”

“I’ve heard it can be very nice,” he allows.

“Have you never—?”

“Been in love?” he finishes. “No. Maybe I thought but,” he shakes his head. “I don’t think it was.”

Its been twelve years but Aziraphale still finds he has to will his mouth steady, keep it from the miserable downturn it begs him to allow. He doesn’t realize Anathema has taken hold of his hand until she starts talking.

“I know it sounds like a cliché, and hey, maybe it is, but, when it’s love, you’ll know.” She squeezes his hand and smiles. “And _I_ love you, in the best platonic way possible.”

Aziraphale keeps his hand steady around hers and manages a smile. “I’m sure Newt will be glad to know he has no competition from me.”

“Course not,” she says, and leans against him again. “We’re like a soccer ball and a duck. It could never be.”

“You are awful,” he tells her. “You know full well by now it’s _foot_ ball.”

\- - -

At 17:12, Aziraphale exits the DVLA, glad to see the day behind him, when he pulls up short at the sight of Crowley pushing himself off the wall he’s leaning against to approach.

He gives Aziraphale an awkward wave. “Hi.” He grimaces. “Hope I didn’t get you in trouble.”

“Hmm?” Aziraphale is admittedly a bit too focused on the sunlight caught in Crowley’s hair. It’s never looked as red as it does now, not under the fluorescent lighting of the waiting room, nor the warm yellow lighting of The Blind Owl.

_Born of the sun_ , he thinks vaguely, and then Crowley is bent close.

“You alright?”

“Oh, I’m sorry, what was it— trouble? No, no, nothing like that,” Aziraphale waves him off. “What are you doing here?”

“Well,” Crowley says with a grin, “seeing as I’m newly re-licensed, I thought you might fancy a ride out, maybe stop for dinner?”

“Oh,” Aziraphale says, a pleased flush rushing through him.

_He’s asking you because he wants to. He doesn’t have to. He wants to._

“That sounds lovely.”

Crowley brightens, and holds an arm out. “Then follow me, angel, and I’ll show you the world.”

**\- - -**

“Can I ask you something?”

Aziraphale swallows his wine and quickly dabs at the corner of his mouth with his napkin. “Of course.”

Crowley grins at him from across the table. “No firing squad here, angel, you don’t need to look so tense.” He leans forward in his seat, and in this secluded corner booth slips off his glasses. “You’ve never asked me about my eye, or…” he waves his sunglasses by one arm.

“That’s not a question,” Aziraphale says.

Crowley lifts a brow. “Why not?”

Aziraphale could play dumb here; _why isn’t it a question?_ But he sees the flicker in Crowley’s expression, and he can recognise uncertainty when he sees it.

“Well, I suppose I figured it was for you to say, if you wanted.” Crowley is watching him carefully, and Aziraphale wants nothing more than to banish that guarded expression. “It’s—” he flounders.

Their waiter glides up between them, wordlessly refilling their glasses and switching out the bread basket for a full one. Crowley’s slipped his glasses back on and Aziraphale feels a sharp pang at the knowledge that Crowley has something he is ashamed of, tries to hide.

“You know, when I was eleven years old, I was bitten by a dog. You might have—” he flushes slightly at the thought – “noticed the scar, on my thigh.”

_Might have noticed_. As if Aziraphale’s skin hasn’t been on fire everywhere Crowley stroked and licked three days ago, his tongue slow over the puckered skin that twists Aziraphale’s left leg.

“Well, it happened right before summer break. I had stitches and my mother was so paranoid of them getting wet or splitting apart that I was forebade from anything that didn’t include sitting on the porch. And that was where she entertained guests, so every day I was stuck out there having her friends stare and ask stupid questions. One of them even wanted to touch it!” Aziraphale grimaces at the memory, then looks at Crowley. “It was uncomfortable and awkward. And it was only for a couple of weeks.”

He reaches and takes a nimble-fingered hand in his own. “It doesn’t matter to me. What your eyes look like. At least not in a way I would judge you,” he amends quickly. “I like how they look, in the light, or the dark. I like your dark glasses, and how you look in them.” Aziraphale takes a deep breath and makes himself say the next words. “I just like you. Any way I can see you is, well, it’s fine by me.”

The finish is a bit awkward, and Crowley leaves his glasses on, but Aziraphale can feel the look directed his way, can see himself reflected in those dark lenses, and he stays steady, surprising even himself, what with how his heart pounds.

Crowley lifts and kisses the back of Aziraphale’s hand, his lips curled in a smile so heartwarmingly fond that Aziraphale feels a bit woozy just from seeing it.

There’s promise in that smile, he thinks, and he faces it head-on and smiles back.

\- - -

“Why the hell does it matter what I do in my time? Don’t tell me Wednesday if you mean Tuesday.”

Crowley shakes his head, frowning. “He sounds like a tit. Gabriel, you said?”

“Yes. And you know what? I should have said what I was thinking.”

“And what would that have been?” Crowley grins.

Aziraphale jabs a finger at an imaginary Gabriel standing before him. “ _Fuck_ you, Gabriel!” He gasps and covers his mouth. “I can’t believe I said that. He’s really not that bad.”

Crowley gives him a disbelieving look.

“No, that’s a lie, he’s horrible,” Aziraphale sighs, and reaches a mite unsteadily for his glass, runs his fingers over the rough-cut base. “I’m sorry,” he adds, looking at Crowley on the other end of the couch. “I don’t mean to go on.”

“No, don’t be silly,” Crowley says. “You can’t say this to your co-workers.”

Aziraphale groans. “All of them, and I say this with the greatest pettiness I can muster, are awful. I don’t think I even talk to more than two people a day unless I’m testing.”

“All of them bores, I expect,” Crowley says sympathetically. He’s not had as much to drink, but there’s a loose-limbed easiness about him, and he oozes contentment from every pore, glasses left on the coffee table.

“Oh, well, they’re always laughing and talking quite loudly in the break room. Apparently, I’m a great source of amusement.” He raises his glass and takes a quick sip. Crowley sits up with a frown.

“What do you mean?”

“The way I dress, the way I talk, me being an amateur poet,” he shakes his head, “all of it very funny. I’ve been told bowties are nearly as decrepit as dinosaurs, unless one is a _hipster_ , and even then that comes with “skinny jeans” and, well,” he stops before he can fall into the puddle of misery that always hangs about behind him, ready for him to sink in and lose himself to the whispers and words, _fat, boring, old_ , a mantra that on his worst nights makes him leave dinner unmade and himself in front of the mirror, glaring down every imperfection, every hint of excess.

“That’s not right,” Crowley says. “That’s harassment, that’s— it’s a government job, right, I know they always have HR departments stuffed up the wazoo—”

“Oh, they don’t mean anything by it,” Aziraphale says, instead of _tell me I’m not wrong for being upset by it, tell me it’s not an overreaction_. Once, he’d brought it up to Gabriel. The next day he’d heard Gabriel mocking him. He won’t bring it up again.

Crowley visibly struggles with his words. “We— how—” then he sighs. “I don’t like that people make fun of you.”

Aziraphale means to reassure him with his next words. “I’m used to it.” But instead of looking settled, Crowley frowns more, before scootching closer along the couch and dropping a kiss to Aziraphale’s shoulder. They sit in silence for a minute.

“I didn’t know you wrote poems. Poetry,” Crowley says. Aziraphale shrugs.

“Not as much anymore.”

“Oh? What’s changed?”

“I’m just…” Aziraphale doesn’t know how to put it in words, this heavy feeling in his soul. Its kept him weighed down, dull, shut off from that which he used to be able to tap into, a love for love, for people, for the future, for the earth. Where he used to be a finely sharpened pencil he’s gone blunt, worn down. He’s never had as more constant an enemy dogging his steps, fitting neatly in his life by way of forcing everything else out. It’s part of what sometimes makes him feel his skin is too tight, like there’s some innermost part of him craving to break free but lacking the willpower.

“Busy,” he finishes in the ringing silence. Crowley hums, an acknowledgement but nothing more.

“What do you want?” he asks suddenly, an arm around Aziraphale’s shoulders.

“How do you mean?”

“I mean, _what do you want_. Where do you see yourself in five years, doing for work, do you want a pet, a kid—” Crowley stammers out some indecipherable noises which may contain vowels and gestures widely. “What do you want?”

“I’ll have to think about it,” Aziraphale says after a minute. He hasn’t the foggiest on how to answer that, and his brain is heavy with drink, turning each thought over in clumsy fingers before releasing it for breath.

“It’s not a loaded question, I mean, you must want something.”

“Well, what do you want?”

“Me?” Crowley blinks, then shrugs, sipping from his tumbler. “I want to keep working as a photographer. Make a difference, if I can. Find…” his voice drops off and he mutters “someone.”

Aziraphale doesn’t think he imagines it, the way Crowley’s hand tightens around him for an instant, and he dares to lean a little more against Crowley.

“There is one thing,” Aziraphale says in the quiet.

“Oh?”

“I’ve fantasized about it for ages,” he admits. Crowley sits up, the curl of a smile starting to blossom.

“What’s that, angel?”

“Well, I’m at work, and Gabriel barges into my office, or maybe I’m in the break room with an audience—” Crowley’s face is going through a wide range of expression “—and he’s come to really lay one into me. When you get a reprimand, they make you sign a form, so he has the form, right, and he says _I’ve got the—this is the paper you need to sign_ and then I—"

Aziraphale stands successfully on his second attempt and wobbly faces Crowley. “Then I say Of course, Gabriel, just let me get my pen—” he sticks his right hand in his front trouser pocket “—oh, I can’t seem to find, oh there it is!”

He pulls his hand out, gives imaginary Gabriel two fingers, and beams at Crowley. “And then I walk out looking, I should expect, _very_ cool.” He drops to sit next to Crowley who is shaking with laughter.

“What?” Aziraphale demands, but he’s grinning as Crowley laughs. “You think I would look cool doing that, don’t you?”

“Angel, I would _pay_ to see you do that,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale revels in the name, so casually given, so affectionately said. He firmly tells the flare in his chest to settle down, not to stoke the embers too high, here at the beginning. He hopes it listens.

Crowley crinkles his nose, and it’s so adorable Aziraphale doesn’t clue in he’s speaking until Crowley nudges him with a grin.

“This 50s music is some kind of thing,” he says, but he’s not laughing at it, instead saying it in contemplation. “The birth of rock’n’roll, a saxophone and piano.” The radio plays on and suddenly Crowley is cackling.

“What’s so funny?” Aziraphale asks, and for once he is confident the answer won’t be _you, actually_ , and awaits the reply eagerly.

“What _is_ this song?”

Aziraphale listens for a moment then nods. “Seven Little Girls. Catchy, eh?”

“Honestly angel, it sounds like the sort of song you’d get _murdered_ to.”

Aziraphale hoots. “It does _not_. It’s a fun little ditty about, about, an orgy. In a car.” It’s the whisky that makes him reach up and honk his own chest. “Beep beep. Seatbelts don’t count as protection.”

Crowley is laughing, and it’s such a wonderfully bright sound, and contagious, because Aziraphale suddenly can’t stop laughing, and he thinks the walls of his house must shake with it, this unaltered joy ringing out, and he wonders how it could ever be contained.

Crowley leans forward to set his empty glass on the low coffee table and ends up slipping off the couch to his knees. His forehead clunks against the edge of the table and he sounds so offended when he hisses, “ _what?_ ” that it sets Aziraphale off all over again. Crowley is trying to frown at him even as he’s starting to laugh again.

“Stop,” Aziraphale orders minutes later, when Crowley has tried and failed twice to clamber back on the couch and his sides ache from laughter. “Just stay on the floor, you can’t fall off of the floor.”

“Then come here,” Crowley says, reaching and grabbing Aziraphale’s hand. He tugs gently. Aziraphale sighs but slides down, and Crowley leans against him, an arm circling around his waist.

“I’m going to puke down your shirt now,” Crowley says, and Aziraphale gasps.

“Oh, I wish you wouldn’t,” he says, and reaches to push Crowley’s fringe back from his face. “All right but I warn you, I’m a sympathetic puker so this could get messy.”

Crowley sits up, peers at Aziraphale. “I wouldn’t actually throw up on you. But,” he pauses, “you would have let me.”

“Well, better that than trying to walk through the house spewing on everything from here to the toilet,” Aziraphale reasons.

Crowley leans in and burps. “Oh, oh my _god_ —” he pulls back, looking mortified. “I meant to kiss you, I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to blast you with whisky and sashimi breath.”

“If I was going to let you vomit down my shirt what makes you think a belch in my general direction would offend me?”

It’s so easy, to laugh with him.

“I—” Crowley starts then stops, a funny look contorting his features for a moment.

“You what?” Aziraphale asks. Crowley shakes his head.

“I need to get up off this floor,” and he wobbles to his knees. “Why don’t we put on a movie and snog on the couch?”

They’re both very enthusiastic about this idea and, working together, are soon pressed together on the couch, limbs crossing and lips meeting in endless kisses, soft presses over necks and jawlines, fingers touching over clothes, tangled in hair. The television never does get turned on, unlike others in the room.

It’s nearly midnight when Aziraphale rouses from his half-sleep, lifting his head from where it was on Crowley’s chest, Crowley who is smiling down at him and still holding him close.

“I better go,” Crowley tells him, and kisses his forehead. Aziraphale sits up, head pounding with the retreat of liquor, leaving his tongue sickly sweet and gut unsettled.

“You’re sober?” he asks, and Crowley nods.

“As a priest.”

“Not on Easter Sunday, I hope,” and Crowley dips his head for a kiss.

“Up, you’ll thank me later for not letting you sleep bent up like that.” They stand and shuffle through the living room, ending at the front door, Crowley’s jacket folded over his arm.

“Can I see you this weekend?”

Aziraphale smiles. “Yes, I’d like that very much.”

It takes ten minutes to say goodnight, then Crowley is loping down the walk to his car, a stick figure in the shadows, lit from above by a silvery moon. He lifts a hand in farewell as he backs down the drive and roars down the street.

He waves again three days later, this time when Aziraphale comes outside, having sat at the front door watching for him. He’s crossed to open Aziraphale’s door for him, and in front of Swindon Street and God herself they kiss in the drive.

Crowley navigates the streets smoothly, one hand tangled up with Aziraphale’s, and in the late afternoon haze his profile dips in and out of flashes of sunlight, and again Aziraphale is caught at the colour of his hair lit up like this.

Crowley doesn’t say anything about his staring until he’s parked outside of Leonardo’s and can quirk a knowing grin at Aziraphale. “Take a picture, angel, it’ll last longer.”

“I would very much like to,” Aziraphale smiles at him. “One of the two of us, perhaps.”

“In the restaurant?” Crowley suggests after a moment, with that familiar slow smile.

Aziraphale nods, and they get out. In front of the restaurant stands an ornate marble fountain, cherubs holding horns burbling water, and Crowley tugs on his hand and gestures at the fountain.

“I mean,” he says, looking from Aziraphale to the fountain and back, “cherubs and an angel?”

He grins when Aziraphale rolls his eyes and leads him over, waving at two women exiting the restaurant.

“Pardon me, can I trouble you for a picture?”

“No trouble!” one of them says brightly, and Crowley hands over his phone and then poses them in front of the fountain, Aziraphale pulled to his side.

“Ready?” the woman calls out.

Aziraphale nods, very aware of the lean body pressed to his, how easily his own arm encircles Crowley’s waist, but then—

“Just a sec,” Crowley says, and he reaches up and tugs his sunglasses off, tucking them in his jacket pocket. “Right.”

Aziraphale’s heart swells. Crowley’s arm is tighter around Aziraphale but he keeps his shoulders straight, and Aziraphale sees the flash of teeth as he grins.

“Say love!” the woman commands.

Aziraphale feels like he’s been punched in the gut, breathless in an instant. The fear, the elation— is this the real name?

Crowley gives him a little shake and he snaps back, and remembers his promise, and as one, they call out—

“Love!”

Aziraphale is going to need a copy of that picture.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Seven Little Girls is definitely a song that would be fitting in a horror movie.

**Author's Note:**

> This fic is complete except for editing and will be updated once a week, every Monday.


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